Around the World

Local News from All Over

Sweden Ranked "Greenest" Switzerland - The Swiss-based World Conservation Union (IUCN) and the
Canadian International Development Research Center's joint-report, "The
Well-being of Nations," placed Sweden at the top of 180 countries
graded on the basis of wealth, human services, public education,
political freedom, peace, conservation and environmental quality.
Sweden was followed by Finland, Norway, Iceland and Austria. Germany
ranked 13th and Japan 24th. The US came in a distant 27th, behind
Belize, Guyana, Uruguay, Surinam, Peru and the Dominican Republic.

The Kids Are Not All Right Belgium - Researchers at the University of Liége believe that they have
solved the mystery of "precocious puberty" that has caused immigrant
girls from India and Colombia to start developing breasts at the age of
eight and to begin menstruating at 10. It turns out that 75 percent of
the children tested had high levels of DDE in their blood. DDE, a
derivative of the insecticide DDT, mimics the effect of the sexual
hormone estrogen. While DDT has been banned in the US and Europe for
decades, it is still used in many developing countries - including
India and Colombia.

Another Nuclear Near-Miss UK - A nuclear disaster was narrowly avoided last September when 24
radioactive fuel rods fell from a crane and crashed onto the concrete
floor of the Chapelcross nuclear reactor complex near Annan.
Chapelcross, which is run by the state-owned British Nuclear Fuels,
hosts four 50-MW reactors and a secret plant that produces tritium for
Trident missiles. The local press reported that the accident risked
"the death of workers at the plant and the release of a radioactive
cloud which would have contaminated the entire region." Nuclear
engineer John Large called the accident "a cock-up that was potentially
very serious indeed because of the risk of a fire." The fuel rods,
which were being moved to a "cooling pond" for storage, had to be
bathed in liquid CO2 to keep them from overheating. Despite the danger,
the mishap was not publicized. Two months earlier a "grab-release"
mechanism failed during another defuelling operation. In 1999,
Chappelcross racked up four pollution incidents. In May 1967, the plant
suffered a partial meltdown in a reactor fire that sent a radioactive
cloud over the countryside.

The Med Goes Whale-Friendly Italy - Italy, France and Monaco have approved the creation of an
84,000-square km (32,400-square mile) whale sanctuary in the
Mediterranean - the first such treaty in the northern hemisphere to
include international waters. Creation of the reserve caps a 10-year
campaign by the World Wide Fund for Nature and other groups to protect
the 2,000 whales and 45,000 striped dolphins that summer in the
Mediterranean. Driftnet fishing will be banned from an area twice the
size of Switzerland.

WTO Hoaxer Applauded Finland - Last August, Hank Hardy Unruh took the stage at the "Textiles
of the Future" conference in Tampere and railed against Mahatma Gandhi
and Abe Lincoln. The 150 delegates, believing the speaker to be an
official representative of the World Trade Organization, applauded as
Unruh called Gandhi's "self sufficiently" movement a case of
"misguided" protectionism and criticized Lincoln's opposition to
slavery as "criminal interference with the trade freedom of the South."
Unruh concluded that the Civil War was "just a big waste of money"
since the advent of modern sweatshops had proved the historic
inevitability of slavery. To the cheers of the audience, Unruh ripped
off his business suit to reveal a golden leotard adorned with a
three-foot-long inflatable phallus. The phallus, Unruh explained,
contained a powerful electronic device that could be used "to monitor
distant, impoverished workforces and to administer shocks to encourage
productivity - assuring that no 'Gandhi-type situation' develop again."
Andy Bichlbaum, the ringleader of the Yes Men, the group that staged
the hoax, commented: "If a group of Ph.Ds cheers at such crudely crazy
things just because it's the WTO saying them, what else can the WTO get
away with?" [This and other anti-WTO hoaxes can be viewed on the Yes Men website: www.theyesmen.org.]

Roddick Rocks the Shop UK - Body Shop Founder Anita Roddick once said that she would sooner
"slit her wrists" than become part of corporate Britain. Body Shop
stockholders must have been ready to hand Roddick a razor after she
strode to the podium at the Edinburgh International Book Festival and
declared "The Body Shop is now really a dysfunctional coffin." Roddick
complained that her dream of "ethical capitalism" had begun to fade
after the company went public. The drive to earn stockholder dividends
has killed the company's spirit and blunted its celebrated "political
edge." Roddick stated that she was particularly chagrined when she
asked "every shop to challenge the World Trade Organization" and found,
to her dismay, that "they won't do that."

Carbon Storage in Tree Trunks UK - With the support of pop stars Stella McCartney, Atomic Kitten, the
Pet Shop Boys and other British celebrities, Forest Futures has become,
in the words of Green Futures magazine, "a veritable Heineken of the green movement." People are drawn to Forest Futures [www.futureforests.com] by the group's promise to "plant trees to offset your carbon emissions, making you a carbon-neutral citizen or corporation" [Solutions, Winter 2001-2].
But critics warn that simply planting trees won't solve the global
warming problem - especially if multinational logging firms continue
clearcutting the world's remaining forests. Mike Mason, who used to
head a similar campaign called the Carbon Storage Trust, observes that
absorbing the UK's carbon emissions would require planting trees over
"an area the size of Devon and Cornwall every year." Offsetting the
world's CO2 emissions would require planting enough new
trees to cover Europe from the Atlantic to the Urals. And the solution
would only be temporary since, when the trees die, they will release
much of the stored carbon back into the atmosphere. Mason now heads a
new group called Climate Care [www.co2.org], which is promoting the use of renewable energy.

Tourism's a Draining Experience Spain - Water tables are falling worldwide and one of the biggest
drains is tourism. A tourist visiting Spain soaks up 880 liters (232.5
gallons) a day, more than three times the amount used by a local
resident. The UN Food and Agriculture Organization estimates that the
water needed to sustain 100 tourists for 55 days could grow enough rice
to feed 100 local villagers for 15 years. The Mediterranean tourist
town of Benidorm now has to import water through a 300-mile pipeline
from Madrid just to keep its 30,000 swimming pools filled. In the
Caribbean, hundreds of thousands of residents watch their taps run dry
as water is diverted to supply hotels during the tourist season. An
18-hole golf course built in the tropics requires as much water as a
town of 10,000. "Tourists in Africa will be having a shower and will
see a local woman with a pot of water on her head and they are not
making the connection," says Tricia Barnett, director of Tourism
Concern [Stapleton House, 277-281 Holloway Road, London N7 8HN, UK, www.tourismconcern.org.uk].
"Sometimes you'll see a village with a single tap, when each hotel has
taps and showers in every room." Tourism Concern is the publisher of Being There, "the world's only travel magazine dedicated to ethical and fair-trade travel."

Renewables Sprout in Brussels Belgium - The European Parliament has approved a law requiring member
nations to double the amount of renewable energy produced in the
European Union by 2020. Even the German chemical industry association,
VCI, has called on the US to abide by the Kyoto Protocol to cut
greenhouse gases. (George Bush rejected the treaty in 2000.) VCI
contends that it makes economic sense to adopt more efficient energy
technologies.

Gulag for Scientists Russia - Dr. Yuri Bandazhevsky discovered the hard way that it isn't
safe to investigate radiological contamination. Bandazhevsky, the
director of the Gomel Medical Institute in Belarus, reported finding
high levels of Cesium-137 contamination left over from the 1986
explosion of the Chernobyl nuclear powerplant. After he published
studies linking the contamination to heart and nervous-system problems
in children, Bandazhevsky was arrested and charged with bribery.

Witnesses who testified against him subsequently claimed that they
had been forced to lie. When the judge trying the case refused to
convict Bandazhevsky, the case was transferred to a military court,
which has no appeals process. According to the Nuclear Information and
Resource Service [www.nirs.org], the prosecutor "literally disappeared - no public entities have heard from him since."

On June 18, 2001, despite his ill health, Bandazhevsky was
sentenced to eight years in a prison work camp. He is allowed only
three annual visits from his wife and is banned from conducting
scientific research for five years.

Two days after Bandazhevsky was sentenced, Alexander Nicolaievich
Devoino, one of Bandazhevsy's colleagues, was found unconscious outside
the door of his home, covered in blood. While working at the Institute
Belrad, Devoino had conducted more than 300,000 independent
measurements of Cesium-137 contamination in food. The Institute's study
of 120,000 children found radiation levels that were eight to 10 times
higher than those reported by the Ministry of Health.

Friends claimed that Devoino was the victim of an attempted
assassination. They reported that he had been attacked from behind with
"American fists" (the local term for "brass knuckles"). Doctors who
treated Devoino for severe head injuries described the assault as a
"professional" attack. [Follow the story on www.bandazhevsky.da.ru]

Taking a Back Seat to Europe Sweden - Portland, Oregon is celebrated as an eco-friendly town, with
six percent of commuters using mass transit, but this pales to
insignificance compared with European cities. In Stockholm, 70 percent
of peak hour trips are on public transit. In Berlin, the figure is 40
percent (with a goal of 80 percent) and in Copenhagen, 34 percent of
commuters ride bicycles. "European transit development has evolved from
a rigorous planning process, precisely what is lacking in most American
models," notes Jim Motavalli in his new book, Beyond Gridlock (Sierra Club Books). "In the US, the auto industry and its close friend, the highway lobby, are in the driver's seat."

Don't Bogart that Reef UK - Coral reefs are found in 101 countries and territories, but they
occupy less than one-tenth of 1 percent of the world's ocean territory.
According to the United Nations Environment Programme's World Atlas of Coral Reefs [www.unep.org; www.icran.org],
these "rainforests of the oceans" comprise only 284,300 square km
(110,938 square miles), an area about half the size of France. Coral
reefs support an estimated 2 million marine plants and animals,
including one-fourth of all marine fish species. "Coral reefs are under
assault," says UNEP Executive Director Klaus Toepfer. "They are
overfished, bombed and poisoned. They are smothered by sediment, and
choked by algae growing on nutrient-rich sewage and fertilizer runoff.
They are damaged by irresponsible tourism and being severely stressed
by the warming of the world's oceans. Each of these pressures is bad
enough in itself, but together, the cocktail is proving lethal."

Bush to Reefs: "Drop Dead" Scotland - Glasgow University Marine Biologist Rupert Ormand warns that
the world's coral reefs cannot survive the onslaught of global warming
triggered by the burning of fossil fuels. "It is hard to avoid the
conclusion that most coral in most areas will be lost," Ormond told the
British Association for the Advancement of Science. The intricate reefs
could be reduced to crumbling, bleached ruins by 2050. Even if the US
and other greenhouse polluters stopped burning fossil fuels
immediately, it would be 50 years before ocean temperatures would cool.
By that time, the coral reefs could be dead and the ocean's ecology
severely disrupted. Without the protection of the reefs, coastal cities
will be more vulnerable to extreme weather events. Ormand offered only
one positive note: In a warmer world, coral reefs might be able to
re-establish themselves in the cooler waters of the North Atlantic and
Mediterranean seas.

Green Bombs Set for Future? UK - NATO could one day be firing "green bombs'' that will still kill
people but won't release toxic chemical byproducts. Munich University
Chemistry Professor Thomas Klaptoke claims that a proper mix of
explosive ingredients will "produce nothing but hot air." Reuters reports that the technology can be "scaled down for handguns, making
them safer for soldiers and police officers who risk lead poisoning
from hours of indoor target practice."

Chairman Murdock Strikes a Deal China - News Corp. media mogul Rupert Murdock has finally attained his
long-sought goal of extending his communications empire to China.
Murdoch's Star TV has been granted permission to transmit to cable
viewers in "a restricted area in Guangdong province." China asked only
one thing in return: that Murdoch ensure that a China Central
Television channel be widely available in the US. To accommodate
China's rulers, Murdoch removed the BBC from the Star network after the
BBC broadcast documentaries critical of the Chinese government. Star
TV's pitch was doubtless enhanced when Murdoch's son, James, openly
criticized the Falun Gong, an outlawed religious movement that has been
brutally suppressed by Beijing.

Agent Orange Victims Vietnam - During the Vietnam War, the Pentagon sprayed 19 million
gallons of Agent Orange herbicide over 3.6 million acres of Vietnam
(not to mention Laos and Cambodia). The spraying of the dioxin-laced
defoliant went on for nine years. Now, 27 years later, one million
Vietnamese (including 100,000 children) suffer from chemically induced
deformities and disease. A quarter century after the conflict ended, 25
percent of the dioxin released by the spraying is still detectable in
soil, fish, animals and human tissues. Diseases linked to Agent Orange
include: soft tissue sarcoma, Non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, spina bifida,
prostate cancer, multiple myeloma, porphyria and diabetes. Last
September, after six years of negotiations, the US National Institute
of Environmental Health Sciences reached an agreement to provide aid to
Vietnamese health researchers. Noting that people are still being
poisoned, University of Texas Researcher Dr. Arnold Schecter told the Raleigh News & Observer, "We need to move quickly. In America, this would be a public-health emergency."

Buy a Frame, Doom an Ape Indonesia - Powerful syndicates are illegally cutting ramin trees in
Kalimantan's Tanjung Puting National Park to feed the global demand for
blinds, picture frames and moldings. The Environmental Investigation
Agency (EIA) and Telapak Indonesia report that the trees are shipped
through Malaysia and Singapore to mask their illegal origin. The US
imported approximately $330 million of stolen rainforest timber in
2000. The forests being destroyed by loggers are also home to 80
percent of the world's surviving orangutans. "Malaysia's role in this
business is tantamount to state-sanctioned theft of a neighbor's
natural resources," EIA Director Dave Curry declared. "Indonesia's
forests can't survive this onslaught any longer. Serious action must be
taken to stop illegal logging now."

Oil in a Day's Work India - The Kerala University womens' college has replaced coke machines with stalls selling ilaneer (coconut water). The move was undertaken to boost local agriculture and give the boot to globalization. Meanwhile, the Express News Service reports, coconuts have come to the aid of auto-rickshaw owners who can
no longer afford to run their vehicles on costly 2T oil. Auto-rickshaw
owners in Malappuram were the first to discover that their vehicles run
farther when coconut oil is added to the fuel tank. Coconut oil costs
half as much as 2T oil, provides better engine lubrication and appears
to increase mileage.

Fighting Dams with Flashlights India - The Gujarat government is trying to force villages to abandon
farmlands doomed to be flooded by the Narmada dam. When the villagers
refused to leave, the government switched off their electricity. The
village children who work in the fields all day can only pursue an
education at night. With the high cost of kerosene for lanterns, the
loss of electric light was devastating. But the kids have been fighting
back by building pedal-powered generators for their homes. Fifteen
minutes of pedaling produces an hour of light for studying. But it
takes money to build the generators. The Rainforest Information Centre,
AID Australia and AID/WATCH are raising funds for a revolving loan fund
to pay for pedal generators. Flowtrack, an Australian alternative
technology firm, is providing LED flashlights that produce more than 30
hours of light on a single charge of a rechargeable 9-volt battery.
Donations from the US, UK and Australia are tax-deductible. Contact RIC
[PO Box 368 Lismore, NSW 2480, Australia, www.forests.org/ric, johnseed@ozmail.com.au].

Villagers Save "Mother Forest" India - By 1987, the Dhani Forest in southwest Orissa State had been
nearly destroyed by logging and cattle grazing, but the elders of five
local villages along the Bay of Bengal decided to join forces to save
the "Mother Forest." More than 1,200 villagers met and agreed to new
rules banning woodcutting, grazing and logging. Certain areas were
declared "non-harvesting zones" and were patrolled by volunteers. Today
much of the dying forest has been reborn, with once-stripped slopes
replaced by 250 species of plants and trees. As the forest returned, so
did the wildlife - boar, wild buffalo, deer, fox, wolf, porcupine,
jackal, parrots, hornbills, pigeons, woodpeckers and doves. The
sustainable harvesting of forest herbs and bamboo has given the
villagers new financial security. "Remarkably, all this was achieved
without any expert help from the state forest authorities," marvels BBC Wildlife. The World Resources Institute [http://www.wri.org]
calls the Dhani Forest a "840-hectare classroom." Today, more than
400,000 hectares in Orissa state are being sustainably managed by
10,000 villagers.

Renewable Energy Windfalls Japan - The power and steel company NKK reports that orders for
windpower plants increased by more than 350 percent in 2001,
representing a combined output of nearly 49 MW. Japan's Ministry of
Economy, Trade and Industry predicts these nonpolluting plants will be
producing 3,000 MW of free electricity by 2010. By mid-2001, NKK had
received orders totaling nearly 67 MW of wind power.

Add This to the Bill of Rights India - Last August, the Indian Supreme Court ruled that the right to
food was a legitimate human right under Article 21 of the Indian
Constitution, which guarantees the right to life. With millions of
Indians facing starvation, the government was preparing to dump several
million tons of unsold food grains into the sea. The Hindu reported that the court "maintained that it was the primary
responsibility of the Central and State Governments to ensure that the
food grains overflowing in [government] facilities reached the many
starving people" and that "no person should be deprived of food merely
because he had no money."

The Not-So-Fertile Crescent Iraq - After the end of the Gulf War, Iraq's Saddam Hussein called for
a massive construction project to destroy the culture of the rebellious
Marsh Arab society by draining the marshlands of southern Iraq. This
vast engineering project devastated a critical flyway for 40 species of
migrating waterfowl. Comparing satellite images from 1992 and 2000, the
United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) reports that nearly 90
percent of the Mesopotamian marshlands - an area also known as the
Fertile Crescent - has vanished in less than a decade. UNEP has called
the destruction a "major ecological disaster, comparable to the drying
up of the Aral Sea and the deforestation of the Amazon." Iraq, Iran,
Syria and Turkey are being urged to agree to a recovery plan to
increase water flow through the heavily dammed Tigris and Euphrates
Rivers and to re-flood the drained marshlands.

New Ozone-Eating Chemicals Nairobi - Last September, as the Antarctic ozone hole over the South
Pole expanded to expose more than 17 million square miles (about the
size of North America) the UN Environment Programme [www.unep.org]
issued some good news and some bad news. The good news was that
programs to phase out ozone-damaging chemicals under the Montreal
Protocol are on schedule and would allow the ozone layer to recover by
2050. The bad news was the discovery that four new man-made chemicals,
which are not covered by the 1987 treaty, could pose a new threat to
the ozone shield. The compounds are hexachlorobutadiene (a solvent used
to make vinyl chloride), n-propyl bromide (a solvent that is used in
pharmaceutical production), 6-bromo-2-methoxyl-napthalene (used to make
the fumigant, methyl bromide) and halon-1202 (used in fire
extinguishers). UNEP has called for "immediate scientific assessments
of these new chemicals" and for a ban on their use if they are shown to
have "real ozone-depleting potential."

United Against Privatization Burkina Faso - Union workers poured into the streets of Ouagadougou
last August to protest government plans to privatize 13 public
companies. "We've seen the consequences of the first privatizations,
which brought about sorrow, misery and death," said union member
Issobie Soulama. Since 1991, Burkina Faso has received $16 million from
the sale of state companies. The unions counter that more than 4,000
workers have lost their jobs.

Destroying Nature to Pay Debts Ecuador - The proposed $1.1 billion, 500-mile Oleoducto de Crudos Presados (OCP) oil pipeline will double the number of wells in the Ecuadorian
Amazon and impact the Yasuni and Cuyabeno National Parks. Last August,
a peaceful sit-in at the OCP office in Quito was broken up by company
security guards who destroyed news cameras and assaulted nine women
environmentalists. A journalist from El Universo was dragged to a locked room and beaten by OCP employees. Amazon oil drilling is opposed by Acción Ecológica and Oilwatch International, which note that armed rebels bombed
Ecuador's pipelines at least five times in 2001. Last May, the existing
pipeline ruptured in a landslide, releasing 7,000 barrels of oil - the
system's 14th major spill since 1998. Two US firms, Kerr-McGee and
Occidental Petroleum, are members of the OCP consortium. The German
bank WestLB, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund are
funding the pipeline. Why is Ecuador willing to risk the survival of
the Amazon forest for temporary oil wealth? The World Bank explains
that the project is the "cornerstone" of an economic plan aimed at
alleviating Ecuador's burgeoning external debt to repay loans to
foreign banks.

Another World Is Possible Brazil - Last August, 279 representatives of civil society
organizations from 39 countries met to begin preparations for the
second meeting of the World Social Forum and the convergence of the
International Encounter of Social Movements in Porto Alegre. The
meetings are intended to build the international alliance of social
movements as an alternative to neoliberal globalization. One of the
first goals of the new world social alliance is to demand that the
proposed Free Trade Agreement of the Americas be put to a vote of the
people in the affected countries [www.movimientos.org].

Goldman Winners Freed Mexico - On November 8, President Vicente Fox released Rodolfo Montiel and Teodoro Cabrera, two campesino leaders tortured and jailed for two years after blockading Boise
Cascade logging operations in the forests of the Sierra de Petalán.
Fox, who promised to root our corruption in government, had wanted to
use the judicial process to release the environmental activists.
Instead, Fox decided to act unilaterally after the murder of the
campesinos' lawyer, 37-year-old Digna Ochoa. Friends suspect that
Ochoa's execution was carried out by death squads in the service of
powerful landowners.

Fox Saves the Turtles Mexico - The Spanish hotel chain Sol Melia's plan to build a posh hotel
on Xcacel Beach has been sunk by local activists who complained that
the project would make the beach "off-limits" to local residents and
disrupt nearby turtle nesting habitat on the pristine Caribbean beach.
After a series of public meetings, Mexican authorities ruled that the
project was not environmentally sound and pulled Sol Melia's permit.
"This is a watershed moment for the consideration of environmental
impact in Mexico," opposition leader Araceli Dominguez told the
Associated Press. "In past years, such projects were quietly approved
by officials - or construction simply started without permits."
Referring to the new administration of President Vicente Fox, Dominguez
observed that "there has been a change in this country. We can have
confidence in our authorities again."

US Smokescreen in China? With 300 million male and 20 million female smokers, China now accounts
for one-third of the world's consumption of tobacco. The World Health
Organization estimates that, of the 10 million people worldwide who
will die from smoking-related diseases, two million will be Chinese. In
some cities, nearly 60 percent of high school boys and 22 percent of
girls are addicted to tobacco.

Chinese attorney Tong Lihua wants to sue tobacco companies for
selling cigarettes to children, but foreign tobacco companies are not
the only ones making a killing off cigarette sales. China's
government-run tobacco companies raked in $12.8 billion in
nicotine-stained revenue in 2000.

The Chinese Academy of Preventative Medicine reports that most
Chinese smokers have no idea that smoking can cause heart and lung
disease. China, unlike the US, does not require health warnings on
cigarettes. US tobacco companies doing business abroad do not include
health warnings on their packages.

A Citizens' Health Research Group (CHRG) [Public Citizen, 1600
20th St., NW, Washington, DC 20009, www.citzen.org] survey of 45
countries found that 42 percent "either had no warning requirement or
had only a very general health warning." Labels in developing countries
tend to be smaller, harder to read and placed somewhere other than on
the front of the pack. Vietnam and Romania do not require health
warnings and 14 other developing countries - Argentina, China, Croatia,
India, Indonesia, Kenya, Malaysia, Nigeria, Pakistan, Peru, Poland,
Senegal, Turkey and Ukraine - lacked meaningful warning labels. Among
developed nations, only Israel and Japan do not require health warnings
on cigarettes.

The information in the warnings is sometimes minimal. The
strongest warnings are found in Norway and South Africa. US warning
labels are weaker than labels in France, Canada, Australia and Thailand.

"On moral grounds alone," the CHRG report concluded, "there is no
justification for providing one group of consumers with one set of
scientific information, while denying similar information... to others."

What You Can Do Write the US Surgeon General and Congress to
demand that US tobacco firms be required to attach prominent warning
labels to tobacco products sold anywhere in the world.

Xena's Genephobia New Zealand (Aotearoa) - Last September, a crowd of 10,000 marched down
the main street of Auckland to Aotea Square in a bitter cold downpour
to protest genetic engineering (GE). Outfitted with banners, costumes
and hundreds of colorful umbrellas, the marchers called for making New
Zealand a GE-Free country. It was the largest protest march in 20
years.

"There was chanting and music ranging from drums, to bagpipes, to
DJs with rock music," reports Meriel Watts, director of New Zealand's
Soil and Health Association (SHA). "The mood was positive and happy -
we will win this struggle for our rights, our food, our environment."

While most activists insisted on no commercial releases of GE
products and no field trials, indigenous Maori activists held to an
even firmer line, arguing for an end to GE experiments in the labs,
since GE research constitutes "tampering with life" and is spiritually
and culturally unacceptable.

With an election approaching and the government's coalition
partner, the Alliance Party, openly opposed to commercial releases of
GE crops, Prime Minister Helen Clarke will find it hard to do anything
but place a moratorium on such releases.

Meanwhile, people have registered their farms and homes as "GE
Free" and are campaigning to have entire towns and regions declared
GE-Free. Film and TV stars such as Sam Neill and Lucy ("Xena the
Warrior Princess") Lawless have taken strong public stands against GE.
There has been a dramatic increase in support for organic farming and
thousands of citizens have joined SHA's call for Aotearoa to be
"totally organic" by 2020.

Bush to Restart Nuke Testing? US - The Bush administration has ordered nuclear engineers at
California's Lawrence Livermore Laboratory to devise a process for
restarting nuclear tests in as little as three months. Livermore Lab
Director Bruce Tarter told the press this analysis was "a
non-provocative activity." "So is selling matches, but not to a
pyromaniac," replied Citizen's Watch, the newsletter of a
Livermore-based watchdog group [www.igc.org/tvc].

Enlightened Education US - Sunshine is a good study aid, according to a study by the Heschong
Mahone Group (HMG), an energy consulting firm. HMG compared the
performance of students in three US school districts and discovered
that students in schools filled with natural sunlight scored 9 to 13
percent higher on math and reading tests than students in classes that
were artificially lit. HMG also found that stores with skylights
averaged sales that were 40 percent higher than their less-enlightened
competitors.

Hush Kits Don't Work US - The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) now requires fitting new
commercial aircraft weighing 75,000 pounds or more with "hush-kits" -
the common name for sound-deadening equipment - to reduce engine noise
during takeoff and landing. The Airports Council International-North
America (ACI) [1775 K Street, NW, Suite 500, Washington, DC 20006, (202) 293-8500]
reports that these retrofitted jetliners are not significantly quieter.
ACI found that people living around airports couldn't tell the new
planes from the old. Because aircraft have operating lives of 20 or
more years, it can take decades for airline fleets to catch up to the
latest and quietest technology.

The Wall Sheet Urinal US - Call it a new low in advertising. The Phillips Beverage Co. has
placed ads for Revelstoke, their new rye whiskey, directly on the
rubber mats that adorn the bottoms of urinals in local pubs. Revelstoke
is just one of the intrusive ads targeted on the BadAds website [www.badads.org].
Other BadAds have been found lurking at the bottom of golf holes and
inserted as digital advertising in video games. Even taxi drivers have
been recruited to don hats with advertisers' logos while delivering
promotional speeches to trapped passengers. If you think that "ad
creep" has gone too far, BadAds provides links to advertisers' online
feedback forms. BadAds co-founder W. Eric Martin explains that he
created the website to "fight intrusive advertising at its source."

A Scavenger Hunt for Terrorists! US - A Mark-15 hydrogen bomb, 100 times more powerful than the weapon
dropped on Hiroshima, lies buried in the mud six miles off the Georgia
coast. Jettisoned by a damaged B-47 on February 5, 1958, the bomb's
exact whereabouts remains unknown. The Air Force claims that the bomb
poses no danger, but when a salvage company offered to recover the
weapon for $23 million, the Air Force replied that it was too dangerous
to be touched. Another hydrogen bomb was lost near Florence, South
Carolina in April 1958.

Ban the Bomber US - At the same time the Bush White House was threatening to abrogate
the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty in order to build a costly and
unproven Missile Defense Shield (MDS) to defend the US from foreign
rocket attacks, it was working on a new weapon that would be impervious
to the MDS. The Pentagon's "Space Bomber" (based on a concept that
Austrian rocket scientist Eugen Sanger first proposed to Adolf Hitler
in the 1930s) would travel 15 times the speed of sound and drop bombs
from an elevation of 60 miles. At that altitude, the Los Angeles Times observed, the bombs wouldn't even need explosives since they would
"crash through concrete bunkers and into underground missile silos like
meteorites through speed and weight alone." The sub-orbital bomber
would fly too fast and too low to be intercepted by an MDS system and
would be able to take off and bomb targets on the other side of the
planet within 45 minutes. Deployment of the Space Bomber would permit
the US to abandon foreign military bases that are facing growing risks
of terrorist attack. The ability to bomb a target anywhere on Earth
within minutes could tempt a president to take action without taking
time to ponder the long-term consequences. Defense Secretary Donald
Rumsfeld has stated that the Space Bomber "would be valuable for
conducting rapid global strikes." Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle
(D-SD) has called the proposal "the single dumbest thing I've heard
from this administration."

Banquet or Banditry? US - Free-trade policies, with their focus on shareholder profits, are
promoting the spread of poverty-wage jobs, increasing the rich-poor gap
and destroying the ability of developing nations to feed themselves. The Global Banquet, a two-part documentary produced by Maryknoll World Productions [www.maryknoll.org]
drives this message home by showing how "a handful of multinational
corporations have come to dominate our food system, driving small
family farmers... out of existence." In 1996, the UN World Food Summit
proclaimed that it was "intolerable that more than 800 million
people... do not have enough food to meet their basic nutritional
needs." The summit announced plans to cut the number of hungry in half
by 2015 by promoting "trade liberalization." By January 2001, the UN's
World Food Program reported, the number of people plagued by hunger had
grown to 830 million. "Markets are not the first nor the last word in
human development," Food First Co-director Anuradha Mittal explains in
the film. "Many essentials for human development are provided outside
the market, but these are being destroyed and squeezed by the pressures
of global competition. When the market dominates social and political
outcomes, the rewards of globalization spread unequally." [Food First, 390 60th St., Oakland, CA 94618, (510) 654-4400, www.foodfirst.org]

San Onofre's Motto: "Whoops!" US - The pipes at California's aging San Onofre Nuclear Generating
Station suffer from embrittlement and rust. The electrical wiring is
suspect and has failed explosively twice in 2001. On February 6, 2001,
an explosion and fire caused one plant's turbine to lose all
lubrication and spin to a stop, causing a four-month outage. On June 1,
an 80,000-pound crane fell 40 feet from a gantry. On June 6, plant
workers spilled 20 gallons of carcinogenic hydrazine. On June 24, a
transformer explosion in the switchyard threw glass shards onto a
nearby street, railway and highway. As one former San Onofre worker
described it, these transformer explosions are like a "tornado in a
razor blade factory."

- Russell D. Hoffman

Why We Need the ABM Treaty US - The US and Russia have more than 2,000 strategic nuclear warheads
(with the explosive force of 100,000 Hiroshima bombs) on hair-trigger
release. For the Bush administration's proposed Missile Defense Shield
to work, the system must be automatically launched by computers. Could
an automated system launch an attack by mistake? "There are always
false warnings," says the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation [www.wagingpeace.org].
Three times in the past 20 years, the US and the former Soviet Union
came within minutes of launching their nuclear missiles. In 1979, a US
soldier accidentally activated a training tape that indicated a massive
Soviet attack was underway. In 1983, a Soviet satellite mistakenly
reported the launch of a US missile. In 1995, Russia almost authorized
a missile strike after Norway launched a research rocket to study the
northern lights. In each case, there was enough time for human
intervention to identify the errors. Under "Star Wars II," the planet's
future would be entrusted to a battery of silicon chips. Queen Noor al
Hussein of Jordan summed it up well when she remarked: "The sheer folly
of trying to defend a nation by destroying all life on the planet must
be apparent to anyone capable of rational thought."

DOE's $32 Billion Boondoggle US - The Department of Energy (DOE) is wasting billions of desperately
needed federal dollars building the ill-fated National Ignition
Facility (NIF) in Livermore, California. The NIF mega-laser was
promoted as a means to keep nuclear weapons engineers employed by
toying with "virtual" nuclear testing. NIF's initial cost of $1.1
billion has risen to $3.5 billion and a study by the watchdog group
Tri-Valley CARES (TVC) has uncovered another "$1.5 billion in hidden
costs." TVC's report, Soaring Cost, Shrinking Performance,
was written by Robert Civiak, who served 10 years as the DOE's nuclear
programs examiner for the US Office of Management and Budget. Civiak's
analysis concludes that the NIF, if completed, will cost $32 billion -
six times DOE's original estimate. Even then, TVC notes, the NIF might
not work, owing to "several serious technical problems, which DOE has
yet to resolve despite years of effort." [The complete report is available from TVC, 2582 Old First St., Livermore, CA 94550, (925) 443-7148, www.igc.org/tvc.]

Kill a Car: Go to Jail US - Jeffrey "Free" Luers was so concerned about the visible death
throes of planet Earth that he decided to do something radical. One
dark night in 2000, he slipped into the lot at Romania Chevrolet in
Eugene, Oregon, and set fire to a fleet of sport utility vehicles.
Luers freely admitted to torching the gas guzzlers, but told the court
that he had taken care to ensure that no one would be injured in his
SUV-roast. "Forty-thousand species go extinct each year, yet we
continue to pollute and exploit the natural world," Luers told the
judge. "All I ask is that you believe that my actions... stem from the
love I have in my heart." Luers was sentenced to a prison term of 22
years. As the Czech-based CarBusters magazine notes [http://www.carbusters.ecn.cz],
"22 years is longer than many murderers and rapists receive." The
sentence is being appealed. Meanwhile, "Free" has been placed in
solitary confinement after being attacked by other inmates. [Legal Defense Committee, FCLDC, PO Box 50263, Eugene, OR 97404, www.efn.org/~eugpeace/freecritter].

Big Eartha US - It took the map publisher DeLorme two years of work, but the company has made it into the Guinness Book of World Records by building "Eartha," the world's largest rotating globe. The
41-foot-tall miniature Earth (assembled from 792 map sections supported
by 6,000 pieces of aluminum) tilts at 23.5 degrees and completes one
full rotation every minute. Eartha is housed in a large showcase
building at DeLorme's headquarters in Yarmouth, Maine. [Eartha Education Alliance, (207) 846-7000, ext. 2388. www.delorme.com]

DEA Outlaws Hemp Foods US - On October 9, the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) published a notice in the Federal Register that would make it illegal to produce or consume "any food or
beverage... or dietary supplement" containing hemp grain. The DEA
published the notice as an "interpretive rule" to avoid the requirement
for public comment. The DEA argues that hemp grain has always been illegal and poses a threat to "public health and safety." "For the
first time in US history, the federal government is outlawing a whole
class of food products," says Boulder Hemp Company co-founder Kathleen
Chippi. Consumers and hemp food firms have been ordered to destroy all
hemp food products by February 6, 2002. The Colorado Hemp Initiative
Project [PO Box 729, Nederland, CO 80466, (303) 448-5640, www.levellers.org/cohip]
notes that health food experts have hailed hemp as "the most
nutritionally complete seed on the planet for human consumption." In
addition, "hemp food has been produced and safely consumed in the US
since the founding of the country and has been used worldwide for over
10,000 years without any adverse health effects." Hemp paper, fiber and
rope is exempt from the ban, but the DEA reportedly hopes to extend the
ban to hemp lotions, soaps, shampoos and lip balms.

Run, Henry, Run Former secretary of state and National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger
is a wanted man. Courts in Argentina, France and Chile want Kissinger
to testify about his role in human rights violations around the world.
On May 31, 2001, a French court tried to obtain Kissinger's testimony
on Operation Condor (a joint campaign by several military dictatorships
to murder dissidents across Latin America). When Kissinger fled France,
the story was front page news in Europe but received almost no mention
in the US. Kissinger initiated the secret bombing of Cambodia and Laos;
supported fascist military coups in Chile, Argentina and Greece; and
allegedly gave the "green light" for the Indonesian Army's invasion of
East Timor. "As the mountain of irrefutable evidence against him grows,
Kissinger should not be able to go anywhere without being confronted by
demands that he be brought to justice," claims Tahnee Stair of the
International Action Center [39 W. 14th St., No. 206, New York, NY 10011, www.iacenter.org].
Kissinger's alleged crimes were the subject of a scathing investigation
by 60 Minutes and a two-part series by Christopher Hitchens in Harper's magazine - now available as a book, The Trial of Henry Kissinger (Verso 2001). When Kissinger addressed the National Press Club (NPC) to promote his book, Does America Need a Foreign Policy?,
every written question from the audience asking for comments on these
issues was ignored. NPC moderator Richard Koonce later admitted: "There
was a definite sensitivity to that. He... preferred to avoid that."
Russell Mokhiber, editor of the Corporate Crime Reporter [www.essential.org/monitor]
asks: "How can it be ethical to agree secretly with an author
beforehand not to ask a certain set of questions?" Fairness and
Accuracy in Reporting [FAIR, (212) 633-6700, www.fair.org]
puts it more bitingly: "If a former secretary of state receiving a
summons about his knowledge of murder, torture and disappearances is
not news, then what is?" PBS' Charlie Rose, CNN's Wolf Blitzer and Fox
News' Paula Zahn also failed to ask Kissinger about his apparent flight
from justice.